[L4] Empty string input value treated as null / not set

[jakobjp]

I'm having some trouble using the Former plugin for Laravel, to handle forms & fields.

The use-case is an "edit"-form for a given model.

Former::text('title')
  ->label('Title')
  ->value( $title );

Former::text('description')
  ->label('Description')
  ->value( $description );

Rules:

• The title must always exist and be at least 10 chars long.
• The description may be empty.

Expected behaviour:

When loading the edit form, I expect the form to show the values of $title and $description in the fields.

Whenever submitting a the form with invalid field-values, I expect the submitted values to be shown in the fields, instead of the values of $title and $description.

Problem:

This works only when submitting non-empty strings!

When submitting an empty-string, it's like Former handles it like the field-hasn't even been submitted, and therefore uses the value given by $title or $description instead.

I thought Former was able to do this "smart", and take the value($variable) value only if the posted data does not contain the field. But it seems Former is taking the variables value also when the submitted was empty.

Why is this a problem?

Imagine you edit both fields, and actually want to change the title and remove the description entirely, which is valid according to the rules. Then, because you entered a too short title, the validation does not pass, and title will get the new (too short) title as field-value, while the description value will fall back to the value of the $description variable, instead of showing an empty field, which was posted.

It feels like $_POST['description'] = "" is treated like $_POST['description'] = null or is not set - even though the empty field is part of the post.

http://stackoverflow.com/questions/24575011/laravel-former-input-field-posted-with-empty-value-shows-old-original-value-in

[claar]

I've run into this myself and thought it was odd. I agree that a POST'd value, even if empty, should override ->value().

[claar]

Unfortunately, I would consider this to be a fairly large breaking change -- let's target this for 5.0.0